I'm resuming posting of my Russians on a weekly basis, as many more units have been painted since my last post in January. I've now painted a sizable force equal to the half the army at Borodino if fighting at at 1/50 ratio (Regimental scale), or the whole army at 1/100 ratio (Brigade scale).
I'll start by posting some humble skirmishing Jager, these are Perry metal models, useful in games where individual units are representing battalions or regiments rather than Brigades. They make six variants in a pack so this is 4 packs of them. On the larger bases to protect the muskets as usual for my skirmish bases.
Six units of Jager from Perry. These are the plastic Russian infantry kit, but I converted the standard bearer models using spare Austrian infantry arms from a Victrix kit, given Jagers didn't carry standards.
I also painted these in winter gear with the green leggings/black gaiters, just to make them more distinct from the line infantry in game, though tactical difference between Line and Jager was debateable...
Close up look at a regiment. As for the Line Infantry to avoid having to keep track of which bases go with which unit in storage, I chose to do each unit as 1st regiment of the Division with the yellow shoulder straps.
Much quicker to paint these than the line, with no white straps and leggings to paint! So with a black undercoat that just means painting the green and a few other colours and done.
A dozen Russian line units painted, from the Perry miniatures kits. Any Napoleonic army needs a good number of line. I actually got these 10 years ago for a birthday present from wargaming buddies - painted at last!
From left to right, theses are the line regiments of the 24th Division, 3rd Dvision, and 22nd Division. Each had two battalions but I have painted up just the first battalions for variety and because I usually play at regimental level for big games (and Russian battalions were often so under strength in 1813 onwards that many regiments were battalion sized).
I chose these divisions because they still had the 1797 era flags in 1812, where the white flag was coloured with theme of the regimental flag, rather than being uniform.
24th Division
3rd Dvision
22nd Division
Here's the first regiment of the 3rd Division, Chernigovskiy to show the scheme I went with for these Russian regiments.
Painting Choices
A couple of points on the paintjobs chosen. I painted all troops with the same red shoulder straps of the first regiment of the Division, and 1st battalion, 1st company pompons and sword knots. This was for practicality reasons - firstly these tiny details are not noticeable except in very close up photos. Plus if I did paint them then keeping track of which bases go with which units would quickly become a nightmare as units are removed during a game and piled up in the casualty pile in the heat of battle.
For similar reasons I didn't add the grenadier or light figures to the units, which should have red and yellow details, and black plumes for the grenadiers. Each unit should have 3 figures with black plumes and red pompons for Grenadiers, and yellow pompons for Lights, if you were painting these as a battalion.
For correct historical detail see the sheet you get in the Perry box below. Just wanting to be clear about this so I don't put anyone wrong on these details! Though, I understand that evidence from Russian archives suggests some additional complications to these conventions if you want to research it further.
Another interesting observation is that as I understand it, the 1812 Kiwer headgear is a mysterious thing that may not have existed, so I've chosen to go with the 1809 era Shako. This would have still been around in numbers even if the Kiwer was a thing I imagine.
For the Russian Green choice - I've gone with Vallejo Black-Green, highlighted with Deep Green.
The flags used are from ESR and enlarged. See here. As in the video below I also bought their rulebook and 1812 source/scenario book to peruse so will review that at some point in the future on this blog. Thanks!
